Doctors add voices to demand for U of C trauma center

A group of doctors and medial students contributed their voices to the ongoing demand for a trauma center at the University of Chicago.

A group of doctors and medial students contributed their voices to the ongoing demand for a trauma center at the University of Chicago.

Mitch SmithTribune reporter

A group of doctors and medical students donning white lab coats prodded the University of Chicago on Thursday to provide trauma care to adults, the latest in a series of events this week criticizing the college and drawing attention to the lack of a full-service trauma center on the South Side.

Speakers at the news conference outside the university’s medical center, which at one point was interrupted by ambulance sirens, emphasized that adult gunshot victims and other trauma patients in some corners of the city must travel 10 or more miles by ambulance to receive care.

Research suggests that living far from a trauma center reduces a gunshot victim’s chances of survival.

Dr. Evan Lyon, a University of Chicago physician, said he lives on a South Side block where an 18-year-old was recently shot. The young man was taken past the University of Chicago on his way to Northwestern Memorial Hospital on the Near North Side, Lyon said.

Though the victim survived, Lyon said, the long ambulance ride underscored the need for an adult trauma center serving the South Side.

“The main issue to his living and dying was probably the traffic on Lake Shore Drive, and that’s not just,” Lyon said. “He’s lucky to have lived, but it’s luck. We could solve that problem by putting a trauma center here in our neighborhood.”

Cook County has nine level-1 trauma centers that serve adults, including four in Chicago. While most residents of the city’s North and West sides are near a trauma center, those on the South Side often face a long ambulance ride to receive care.

University officials have indicated a willingness to be part of a “regional effort” to provide trauma care on the South Side, but they’ve said starting a new center on their own would compromise the university’s ability to provide other services.

The college at times has clashed with the core group of protesters leading the trauma center effort. Last year, police drew their batons and arrested four people when demonstrators staged a sit-in. On Monday, protesters were physically removed by police from a construction site, though no one was arrested. Police and security stood across the street during Thursday’s event but didn’t intervene.

Even as college leaders have declined to open a trauma center, some students and faculty members have spoken out. Dr. Philip Verhoef said he’s worked in the university’s pediatric trauma unit, an experience that he said made him more convinced of the need to provide similar care for adults.

“I’ve been able to see how much good the university is capable of doing to address the problem of trauma here on the South Side,” Verhoef said.